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One
hot summer day, Bill was mowing a hayfield for a neighbor, getting
it ready for the hay bailer to make bales to store for feeding the
cattle in the winter. In those days, neighbors would barter work
between themselves. Bill mowed his own and his neighbor’s hay, and
the neighbor baled his own and Bill’s hay. As Bill mowed laps
around the field, he watched a rainstorm building and blowing in
from the southwest. Each time he made a lap he saw the storm
increasing in intensity, with more and more lightning bolts. Bill
was trying to get the field finished before the storm hit, but
decided the storm was moving too fast and started looking for
shelter. It wasn’t a very good idea to be sitting on a tractor
(especially without any cab on it) in the middle of a field when
lightning bolts were lighting up the sky. As he looked for shelter,
Bill saw that the farmer’s barn door was open, so he pulled into
the barn and parked the tractor just as the storm hit with full
force. Rather than sit on that hard tractor seat while he waited for
the storm to pass, Bill climbed into the loft to take a rest on a
bed of hay.
Bill watched the rain and lightning through
the loft door and had almost dozed off when he heard a noise on the
other side of the loft. He opened his sleepy eyes to see a cat
chasing and playing with a mouse like it was a toy. It was quite
obvious that the cat was having a great time and the mouse was
terrified and fighting for its life. Bill quietly watched the
animals and mused over the fascination of nature. The rain and
lightning had intensified to its peak, so he stood up to get a
better look at the storm. The cat, which had been quietly enjoying
its game, was so startled that it took off running and went straight
out the loft door about five feet with its feet spinning like the
spinning wheels of animals in cartoons. Bill laughed so hard he lay
down and rolled in the hay. The cat landed on the ground on its feet
and was gone in a split second, and the mouse escaped to the closest
hole it could find. By the time Bill recovered from his laughter the
storm had passed, and he got on his tractor and went home because it
was too wet to finish mowing the field. He smiled and chuckled all
the way home.
To this day when this story is told, the big
question is: How many of its nine lives did the cat lose in the barn
loft that rainy day?
Susie Napier, October 1999
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